


Dead Heat

by stardropdream



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Guns, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 05:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuuma goes in for the sneak attack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Heat

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ August 8, 2009.

Sometimes, Kamui wondered why he allowed himself into these situations.  
  
The floor was gritty and his teammates were asleep. The world outside screeched with the grinding and churning of wild mutant animals, festering and fighting. The moon hung low in the horizon, stained a dark blood red and casting an eerie glow upon the government floor. The tiles, long since unwashed and unused and cracked, seemed to be pressing up against Kamui’s back. This was easier to accept than the truth.  
  
Fuuma laid over him, eyes glowing in the red moonlight, the lenses of his sunglasses—unnecessary in the darkness—glinting as if promising something. The gun from his side was pressed nonchalantly against his forehead, also promising something much deeper. But Kamui, being Kamui, often ignored any promises this man delivered, because they were so rarely upheld.   
  
“What are you doing here?” Kamui hissed. It was nighttime, and he hadn’t expected the human to be there, much less there alone.  
  
“Kamui,” Fuuma greeted, his words coming out in a throaty chuckle. Shadows cast across his face made it hard to make out his expression, despite Kamui’s proximity. Kamui knew, though, that his face would be twisted into that same, empty smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”   
  
The vampire squirmed, trying to work his way free, but Fuuma’s knees dug into his side, pinning him there between his legs. One hand grasped one wrist, tethering it to the ground while the gun remained frightfully still against his forehead.   
  
“You’re the one who showed up here,” Kamui snapped.  
  
“Then I suppose it’s you that owes the pleasure,” Fuuma said cheerfully, words crisp in the wasteland’s night air.   
  
“Like hell,” Kamui declared, trying to lift his knee into Fuuma’s gut and possibly get the human to roll off him.   
  
Fuuma, being Fuuma, didn’t budge. Instead, he merely chuckled and the gun on his forehead drifted, sliding down his cheek before pressing rather forcefully into Kamui’s mouth. It struck the back of Kamui’s throat and Kamui flinched very briefly for only half a moment but it was enough for Fuuma’s smile to darken into a smirk. Kamui glared, eyes threatening to burn golden and only just restraining himself.   
  
“I suppose that was rather rude of me,” Fuuma continued, as if this were a normal conversation under normal circumstances. “I didn’t even greet you. Hello, Kamui.”   
  
Kamui cursed but the words were lost to the taste of grit and gunpowder. He glared up at the man. He tongued the barrel of the gun into his cheek and spoke, but with a gun pressed against the back of his throat, he could only speak in vowels.  
  
“Why are you here?” he managed to mumble past the barrel.   
  
“Scouting the area, for the next time my teammates and I came here. Had I known it would be so easy to get here in here without much protest, and catch you off guard, I would have come much, much sooner,” Fuuma said with a good-natured laugh that only made Kamui’s blood boil.  
  
Kamui twitched, wanting to just shove his claws through Fuuma’s throat and be done with it. But it was important not to reveal his true nature, especially not to someone like this ridiculous human being.   
  
He managed to hiss out, “I’ll kill you.”   
  
Somehow, it didn’t occur to him to be afraid of the gun. Even if it wouldn’t kill him and only cause a minor inconvenience for a few days while the hole in his head healed and he nursed a painful migraine, he knew on an intrinsic level that Fuuma would not pull the trigger. And not because he feared killing Kamui or feared what would happen once he did, because the glint in Fuuma’s eyes told him that he was used to taking lives and wouldn’t hesitate—but something about Kamui left him with the urge to toy around with him and to move with him, never quite meeting but never quite running away.   
  
That was perhaps what Kamui hated the most.   
  
“It doesn’t work as well,” Fuuma said with a small pause, observing Kamui over the rims of his glasses, “When you tell me your plans, Kamui.”   
  
“As if you don’t already know my intentions,” Kamui growled, growing used to speaking with a gun between his teeth.   
  
“I wonder sometimes,” Fuuma said with that damned way of speaking he had—saying something when really saying something else entirely, something that Kamui just couldn’t understand.   
  
One hand coolly wrapped around Fuuma’s throat, palm pressing against windpipe. Fuuma, for his part, didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. Just watched Kamui passively, gun grinding into the back of his throat and almost making Kamui choke. He squeezed the man’s throat in warning. Fuuma pressed down, pinning him further and ignoring the way air moved slower to his lungs now and his heart raced. Kamui shifted, pressing up to meet him, for better leverage to squeeze the life out of him.   
  
Fuuma swallowed and Kamui felt his Adam’s apple bob up and down against the flatness of his palm. When Fuuma spoke, Kamui could feel the hum of his words, soft and coated with honey and dangerously sharp.   
  
“I really do wonder.”   
  
Kamui’s lip curled. “I’ll kill you. Make no mistake.”   
  
Fuuma arched one eyebrow and chuckled low in his throat, and Kamui could feel his words vibrate beneath his hand.   
  
“I’ll be waiting,” Fuuma said quietly, “for that day.”   
  
Kamui arched again, breaking his other hand free from Fuuma’s grip and moving for it to join its twin, two hands wrapping around Fuuma’s neck now and squeezing, threatening him and threatening to extinguish that life. The human didn’t flinch or try to dart away, just let out the smallest of wheezes as he fought to bring in air to his lungs. But the eyes just watched Kamui, and slowly moved closer, his laugh managing to come out in a breathless sigh.  
  
“It… would be very easy to snap my neck right now, wouldn’t it?” he asked without really asking.   
  
Kamui’s hands bent, as if he were about to take this advice. Fuuma chuckled again.   
  
“You…” Kamui hissed, eyes hardening.   
  
“Kamui does look his best when he’s angry,” Fuuma murmured and lifted one hand to trace the side of Kamui’s face. Kamui jerked his face away and snarled, glaring up at him and trying to squeeze his way out from under Fuuma. Fuuma, being Fuuma, was stubborn as ever and merely pressed down on him, chuckling even when Kamui robbed him of air and left him breathless.   
  
Despite himself, Kamui felt his grip on Fuuma’s grip lesson just as Fuuma pulled the gun from his mouth, away from his throat and his tongue and his teeth. His eyes sparkled in the moonlight cast by the bloodied moon. Kamui watched him carefully, lips drawn out into a thin line but Fuuma just smiled down at him. Kamui tried to squirm away again but Fuuma made a point to sit down on him, straddling his thighs and staying there, one hand capturing one of Kamui’s wrists again and slowly peeling it away from his throat so that he could breathe again.   
  
Fuuma put one hand on Kamui’s chest, spreading the fingers out. Kamui tried to move away, tried to get that man’s hand away from where his heart was. His eyes, hard and staring, didn’t blink as he looked up at Fuuma, and the human didn’t break his eyes away either. His gloved fingers drummed along the curve of his shoulder bones, curling and following and tracing for a moment, curtains of fabric separating them.   
  
“Bastard…” Kamui began.  
  
“Hm,” Fuuma hummed, watching him. “Same old, same old, Kamui. It’d benefit you to be a bit surprising.”  
  
Kamui went still a moment before the hand from his throat fell away. Fuuma began to smile but it froze when Kamui’s same hand snapped back and grasped the gun in Fuuma’s hand, resting nonchalantly but threateningly against the side of Kamui’s head. Kamui’s hand twisted and pulled and the gun fell from Fuuma’s grasp and into Kamui’s own.   
  
The gun pressed to his forehead, point blank, and his eyes betrayed nothing. Finger curled around the trigger. Eyes narrowed. Hard and unblinking.   
  
Fuuma watched him a moment, the eyes glinting and shifting, tracing the lines of Kamui’s still face.   
  
Then he smiled.  
  
Kamui shoved, kicked out his legs and knocked the man off him. Fuuma fell back, sprawling across the floor and unable to react in time because then Kamui was on top of him, pinning him and glaring down at him, gun still poised at his forehead, and Kamui hoped that Fuuma had the fear of the gun that he himself hadn’t possessed when the tables had turned. Because he was sick of seeing that smile, sick of that arrogance and self-assurance. He wondered what this pathetic human would look like if he actually felt fear for a change.  
  
He allowed himself one little smirk as he leaned forward, shifting against the man. “Like that?”  
  
“Something like that,” Fuuma agreed, his words breathless whispers in the night. He laughed, softly, and tilted his head back to get a better look at Kamui. “I take it back.”  
  
“Take what back?” Kamui hissed low.   
  
Fuuma chuckled. “Kamui is at his best when he looks like this.”  
  
Kamui’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward again. He felt a hand raise and touch the side of his face but he quickly batted it away with the gun before repositioning it in its rightful place at the center of Fuuma’s forehead. There was a long silence, just the sounds of the human below him breathing deeply and the gentle hum in the air that never really went away when they fought.   
  
“Must you always say such stupid, pointless things?” Kamui asked and hated that his voice sounded more exasperated than furious.  
  
Fuuma shrugged one shoulder, shifting up onto his elbows, leaning backwards. Kamui growled, leaning forward and grinding the stolen gun into Fuuma’s forehead, in an attempt to force him back down again. Fuuma, being Fuuma, didn’t obey.  
  
“If you really didn’t want to hear it,” Fuuma said slowly, weighing his words, “wouldn’t you have shut me up for good by now?”   
  
Kamui wasn’t sure what to say to that. So he just toyed his finger along the trigger in warning. Fuuma watched it before shifting his eyes upwards to Kamui again, lips quirking into a knowing smile and then they both knew that Kamui wouldn’t actually use the gun for anything other than intimidation. (And intimidation never worked on this man. Kamui should have known.)  
  
“As if I haven’t tried,” Kamui growled.  
  
Fuuma continued watching him with hooded eyes and a careful smile. “I don’t know if you’ve been trying hard enough, really.”  
  
“Hmph,” Kamui huffed. “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”  
  
The fingers drumming Kamui’s chest before had returned, brushing along Kamui’s chest. Kamui was too busy glaring to distract himself with shoving the hand away, so he just watched the human.  
  
“What are you doing?” he growled.  
  
Fuuma paused again, never once tearing his eyes away from Kamui. Half-hooded and calculating. Fuuma seemed to think a suitable answer to Kamui’s question was to push up and kiss him.   
  
Kamui froze. The world suddenly went painfully still and silent, grinding to a halt and hanging there waiting for permission to resume. Kamui restrained the shaking that threatened to rack up his spine and the only coherent thought that flitted through his mind was _what the hell._  
  
And then Fuuma pulled back, just a hair’s space between their mouths, so close that Kamui could feel the breath breezing out of his mouth. Fuuma licked his upper lip, carefully yet absently. Kamui gave him a wide-eyed stare.  
  
This seemed to amuse Fuuma. But then again, most things seemed to amuse Fuuma. He leaned up again, lips grazing over his ear as he whispered, a small offering, “That’s one way to shut someone up.”  
  
Kamui’s eyes shifted, looking less alarmed and more confused and questioning. He turned his head towards Fuuma, and restrained the shudder as warm breath breezed over his cheek and into his ear. Warm.   
  
“I take it all back,” Fuuma said after a pause.  
  
“What?” Kamui asked, and hated that his voice came out in a soft whisper.   
  
Fuuma chuckled, as if he’d stumbled upon a particularly funny joke. He tiled his head, baring his throat and letting hair fall away from his eyes as he said, “Kamui always looks his best.”   
  
Kamui watched him. “You’re an idiot, aren’t you?”  
  
Fuuma’s smile didn’t falter and he brushed back some of Kamui’s hair with his gun—when the hell had he gotten that back?—Kamui looked down to see his hand was hanging limp at his side, free from his grasp. When had it fallen away from Fuuma’s forehead, and when had the gun returned to Fuuma’s side?  
  
Fuuma’s face was light in the red moonlight as he shifted his eyes away from Kamui—finally. “You tell me.”   
  
Kamui watched him as Fuuma’s eyes looked somewhere beyond Kamui, towards the ceiling or towards nothing. He leaned back when Kamui pushed him away, but Fuuma kept a hold on his tongue, still stroking back Kamui’s hair. Kamui’s hands pressed against his shoulders, holding him there against the ground, as if trying to make him sink in and away from him. But he did not pull away.   
  
“You are,” Kamui decided after a silent minute.   
  
He felt the mouth of the gun press against his temple and stay there, like a prolonged kiss. Fuuma’s eyes shifted back to him and when he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkled.   
  
“I think so, too,” Fuuma admitted.  
  
“… Do you,” Kamui muttered, and it wasn’t a question.  
  
Fuuma chuckled. “Very much so.”   
  
“And why is that?”  
  
Fuuma’s smile betrayed nothing, it merely was. “You tell me,” he said with a shrug, “If you haven’t noticed it already that just means you’re an idiot, too.”  
  
“You bas—”  
  
“Yes, yes,” Fuuma said dismissively. “I know.”   
  
Kamui inhaled sharply, seizing up and leaning back away from Fuuma, who regarded him passively from the floor, the only thing protecting him the gun against Kamui’s temple that he knew he wouldn’t shoot.   
  
He whipped the gun from Fuuma’s hand again and cracked the gun open.   
  
No bullets.   
  
He angled a glare at Fuuma, who only laughed and shrugged.  
  
“You really have no sense,” Kamui growled and tossed the gun away. It skittered across the floor, hitting the opposite wall meters away and punctuating the silent night with a clack of metal against crumbling plaster. “Do you want to die?”  
  
“You tell me,” Fuuma said.  
  
Kamui stood, moving off Fuuma and leaving the human alone on the floor. His eyes narrowed, Kamui crossed his arms and looked away.  
  
“Get out of here.”   
  
Kamui stood back, arms crossed and watched as Fuuma stayed on the ground a long moment before standing up, brushing himself up and laughing inanely to himself.  
  
“So cruel, Kamui,” Fuuma joked.  
  
“I’m tired of this. You won’t get the water so go back to the hellhole you crawled out of,” Kamui growled, arms still crossed and eyes glaring. “You don’t have any weapons and if you don’t leave now, I’ll rip out your throat.”  
  
Fuuma snorted but shrugged again. “Fair enough.”  
  
“I better not see your face again or I’ll—”  
  
“Yeah yeah,” Fuuma dismissed with a wave of his hand. “You always say that. And here I thought you were actually learning to be spontaneous. Give it a rest. You know you’ll see me again.”  
  
“Tch,” Kamui scoffed, looking away. “If only I could be lucky enough to have you erased from this world forever.”  
  
“Don’t act as if you haven’t had the chance,” Fuuma reminded with the same pleasant smile on his face.  
  
The moon had drifted away from the horizon, rising up. Its blood red color was gone now, and it looked the same paled grittiness the rest of the world looked. The shadows grew long across the floor. Fuuma looked at Kamui, head tilted to one side and hand on his hip. Kamui glared back at him, arms crossed.  
  
“Well,” Fuuma said after a pregnant pause. “I’ll be off.”  
  
And he turned his back on Kamui and began walking away.  
  
Kamui watched him a moment. “It’s foolish of you to turn your back so easily on your enemy.”  
  
Fuuma paused at the precipice of the wasteland, the last row of cracked tile. Slowly, he tilted his head so he could look over his shoulder at Kamui, the smile on his face softened by the moonlight but his eyes no less glinting and razor-sharp. The night breeze wafted by, pushing against his hair and his coat.  
  
“I know you won’t kill me,” Fuuma said, and his voice was confident.   
  
Kamui bristled. “How—”  
  
“Your hands are around my throat, Kamui,” Fuuma reminded, “And you always let go.”  
  
Kamui was about to protest but clamped his mouth shut.  
  
Fuuma laughed and looked away again. “And you didn’t shoot, either.”   
  
“There were no bullets,” Kamui protested.  
  
“You didn’t know that,” Fuuma told the sky, tilting his head back to regard the moon of this wasteland. He chuckled again, as was his way. “For whatever reason, you keep me alive.”  
  
“You keep me alive, too,” Kamui snapped back, not wanting the man to mistake his indifference as something as horrible as mercy.   
  
“I do,” Fuuma laughed. “I wonder if our reasons for that are the same?”  
  
Kamui couldn’t tell what his expression was, with his back to him, but he could somehow imagine that it wasn’t quite a smile, because the words didn’t sound mirthful or cheerful, as they often did no matter the situation. Kamui stared at his back, wondering what kind of answer would be the right answer. He couldn’t know the answer. And he didn’t think he wanted to know the reason why this man kept him alive.  
  
“Does it matter?”  
  
Fuuma seemed to think over his question before he turned around and faced Kamui, lips quirked into a smile again.  
  
“I’ll see you again soon, Kamui,” he told him and then left, running into the shadows and disappearing.  
  
Kamui stood in the empty corridors of the government building, grit and grime saturating the surfaces. The moon cast its shadows and Kamui tried to squash the anger in his chest. It wasn’t the normal anger he felt, which burned and raged and made him shake with fury. This was a quieter anger that made his chest ache and his body tensed.  
  
His breath came out short and he tried to maintain control, watching the shadows out in the crumbled buildings and sand dunes and wondering if the moron was going to be killed before he ever made it back.  
  
Probably not, he reasoned. He was too stubborn. He should expect these things from him.  
  
“Spontaneity,” Kamui scoffed. “Everything about him is predictable, too.”  
  
Except he hadn’t expected that kiss. His mouth still burned, and Kamui told himself it was with disgust and with rage. The quiet anger in his chest quivered and pulsed and he clenched his eyes shut and growled low in the back of his throat. He’d expected everything but that kiss.  
  
“Bastard.”   
  
The hum in the air was incessant. The moon hung in the sky, taunting him. He just knew it.   
  
“I don’t want to understand his reasons,” he decided, turned on his heel, and stalked away. “It’ll lead to nothing but unnecessary things.”


End file.
